His administration officials have repeatedly distanced themselves from his statements

Joe Biden is the 'in name only' president of the United States

• Biden recently made a number of controversial decisions.

  AFP

• US Vice President Kamala Harris does not enjoy broad support among Democrats.

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Ulster Heath*

America desperately needs a resolute and visionary leader, finding itself stuck with an ineffective, erratic, and corrupt figurehead.

Joe Biden is the president of the United States in name only. He is the weakest, least influential president in this position for more than a century. He is not America's de facto chief executive, let alone its commander in chief.

He is, at best, a non-executive chairman of the committee, even by the standards of polite opinion in Washington, who has despaired of continuing the charade from which most of the spectators have given up.

His stature declined shamefully, last week, when he abruptly deviated from the text during his speech in Poland, speaking of Russian President Vladimir Putin, commenting, "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power."

It was a dramatic escalation of his miserable role, and a clear message that no sane person could misinterpret, yet it seemed that the White House did not ask him for permission to "clarify" what was wrong with his message.

Biden officials, who are supposed to work with him and not vice versa, immediately denied that the president intended regime change.

They claimed, within seconds of his speech, that the words he said did not actually mean what he meant.

Biden protecting himself

They were undoubtedly seeking to protect Biden from himself, and American interests, through their intervention, as these phrases could have provoked an angry Russian reaction.

It was the most surprising moment of all, a sign that Biden's role is now largely ceremonial, this is a collegiate administration, operating on the basis of a strong democratic government and a federal bureaucracy, and what Biden says should not be taken seriously.

It is not a source of strength.

Officials have repeatedly in recent days distanced themselves from the president's statements.

Notably, he mistakenly told members of the 82nd Airborne Division that they would "go" to Ukraine soon, and said America would respond "in kind" if the Russians used chemical weapons.

His worst mistake came when he claimed, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that “there is one thing, it might be a small incursion and then we end up getting into a struggle about what to do and what not to do.”

He was then asked if he "has given Putin de facto permission to make a small incursion into Ukraine".

Biden's answer was an even more disastrous message to the Russians: "Good question, looks like it was, isn't it?"

Left elite standards

We were expecting his officials' intervention on regime change in particular to create a major controversy in Washington - does the US Constitution require officials to enforce policy measures?

- Not so.

America's left-leaning, double-standard elite often pretends not to notice.

After four years of bitter war with former President Donald Trump, many American media organizations are now back to their old approach, after “someone” has returned to the White House.

As for these institutions, they have assumed the appearance of practicing their normal lives, and a false return to the prevailing rules of conduct, and that graduates of the elite American universities, have returned to the Treasury Department, and taken over the management of the state, all this in fact means important things, which is that the president does not control matters Indeed, once again, America's Constitution is in deep trouble, a scandal.

Major media commentators were outraged by the White House's denial, but refused to ask clear questions about the president's string of gaffes, or to demand an investigation into why this happened.

And if that was Trump, there would be calls from all officials to invoke, at least, the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution regarding whether or not the president could be deemed unfit to remain in office.

Why this leniency with Biden?

Is it because Democrats think his deputy, Kamala Harris, is simply not good enough to be president?

Is it because they consider what is happening to be unnecessary?

Or is it because they believe in the platonic lie, and that it is in America's interest to pretend that Biden is still entirely responsible, to prevent Trump from returning?

Or are they afraid of polls showing Republicans intent on sweeping the midterm elections?

There is no excuse not to scrutinize and hold any president, regardless of his party, to account.

Biden's shocking weakness also helps explain the disastrous skew of US policy in all other respects.

It is assumed that he was elected as a rational, liberal, rather than a vigilant activist, a traditional democrat rather than a neo-socialist, as a rational mediator.

bad tax proposal

And on the economy, his latest tax proposal is far worse than anything Britain's Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn has dreamed of.

Biden wants to tax unrealized capital gains, something that has not been tried in this way before.

He wants to tax wealthy Americans - in fact, not just billionaires, but many other entrepreneurs and investors without whose contributions the US economy would collapse - based on the increase in their wealth.

This may be a recipe for economic collapse, brain drain, capital flight and a massive recession.

Ordinary Americans, as well as businesses, are already fleeing Democrat-run cities, which are now plagued by out-of-control crime, taxes have gone up, and, for too long, very severe COVID-19 lockdowns have emerged.

In the year to July 2021, left-wing-run New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles lost more than 700,000 residents, and in the meantime, conservative-run suburbs are thriving.

On foreign policy, Biden is seeking to turn back the clock to his time as Vice President.

Biden is proposing a disastrous capitulation to Iran on the nuclear issue, and even wants to de-designate the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

His withdrawal from Afghanistan was correct in theory, but it was executed disastrously, and helped send a signal to rogue regimes that the United States had retreated.

The fact that Biden was in office, but not in power, gave the hardliners in his party a signal to unleash the chaos.

His presidency turned out to be a disaster for America, and a disaster for the rest of the world.

How long do we have to bear this farce?

Biden calls for Russia to be prosecuted for 'war crimes'

The day before yesterday, US President Joe Biden called for a "trial of war crimes", after the discovery of many bodies in civilian clothes in Bucha, near Kyiv, stressing at the same time that these crimes did not amount, in his view, to "genocide."

"We have to gather information" about what happened in Bucha, Biden told reporters, and "we must have the full details" in order "to have a war crimes trial."

In response to a question about whether what happened in the Ukrainian town was considered a crime of genocide, Biden said, "No, I think it is a war crime."

The US President also reiterated that he would impose "additional sanctions" on Russia.

"You may remember that I was criticized when I said about Putin that he is a 'war criminal'," he said.

In fact, the truth is that he is (...) a war criminal.”

"This man is brutal, what is happening in Bucha is horrific, and the whole world saw it," he added, calling for the Russian president to be held accountable.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Bucha, where he accused the Russian army of committing "war crimes" that will be recognized as "genocide".

The Russian army occupied Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, on February 27, and was inaccessible for more than a month.

In Bucha, an AFP journalist saw, on Saturday, the bodies of about 20 men, one of whom had a severe head wound, scattered on a street hundreds of meters away.

Moscow, for its part, denied that it had killed civilians in Bucha, announcing the day before yesterday that it would conduct an investigation into "hate provocations" aimed, in its opinion, at "undermining the credibility" of the Russian forces in Ukraine.

 ■ Editor at "The Daily Telegraph"

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